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Kid Critic Gives the Reel Deal

Each week the folks at Cinema Circus show a series of short films on Wednesday evening at the Chilmark Community center. The films begin at 6 p.m. but the circus — complete with jugglers, face painters, stilt walkers, food and music — gets underway at 5 p.m. This week the circus arrives in Edgartown, too, at the Harbor View Hotel on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

The short films are programmed each week around a central theme, introduced in the first film by Professor Projector. This week’s theme is documentary movies.

An advanced screening of the films was arranged with a young cineaste. This week’s reviewer is Claire LaFarge.

There’s the Cinema Circus lion! I think it was funny and realistic. I think it was cute because he has a duck. He teaches about duck-a-mentary. It was an intro-duck-shun. Duck, duck, juice! That’s funny. It should be Duck, duck, goose!

Amar (Dir. Andrew Hinton / India / 2011 / 10 min.)

I would say it’s realistic. I like how he gets on his bike, gets the newspaper. He doesn’t have a helmet, the biking kid. They eat with their hands there. He’s doing a good job in English at school. It’s nonfiction. It is interesting. You could really learn from it.

Early Morning Auto Pilot (Dir. Alex Howat / UK / 2011 / 2 min.)

I thought that was kind of funny and a really good one, and I thought it was more like Cinema Circus stuff than the others. The boy was in bed, he got dressed, and I thought the funny part was that it did it on its own, like, he got dressed, it just automatically put his clothes on, automatically gave him breakfast, automatically walked him, automatically brushed his teeth, automatically put his jacket on, automatically took his backpack, and also automatically opened the door and walked out and shut the door. That’s the order of how you get dressed to go to school. It’s actually what you do. The film made me feel happy and I thought it would be interesting to other kids.

A Family Man (Dirs. Mike Rauch and Tim Rauch / USA / 2012 / 4 min.)

I don’t know what I should call it. It’s really .... I think this is off the hook. It could be real with fake pictures. The dad was kind of mean and strict and was like Go home, Get out, Get here, but I think that if you were really nice to him he would be really nice back because he looks like a nice guy but I don’t think you want to see him every day when you’re in a bad mood or he’s in a bad mood. That’s just what I think.

It’s funny how they actually say that there’s spaghetti growing on trees, and really interesting how they make flour into spaghetti. I don’t know what kind of flour — flour that goes into spaghetti or flowers that you smell. I think it’s funny how all the animals don’t actually move. It looks like there is spaghetti on the trees but there actually isn’t but that’s why I think it’s funny.

The girls have scarves on their head. They don’t have houses; they live in sticks and bricks. I think they’re comfortable that way. It’s interesting how boys wear fabric around them, like skirts, there. I also think it’s really interesting how they all have really short hair, like little babies, like, otherwise they’re bald, and I think that can actually be a good thing in hot weather. I’m gonna guess it’s a hot place. I think that that’s one of my favorite films. I like the part when she’s giving the fabric to her brother — she might have got it just for the dance. She feels better and he feels happier. The boy is happy.

Moscow Cat Theater (Dir. Marilyn Agrelo / USA / 2008 / 3 min.)

Her cats are in training; she’s in training to train her cats in the circus. It’s about cats doing tricks. The cats are doing a really good job, and most of all the people, they train the cats to do as they say. And I just think I want to hire them to train Lolly and when we get a cat. I just thought it was interesting at the end how they really just showed tricks and those cats worked really hard. So I just think that was a good movie.

Frog Weather (Dir. Pauline Kortmann / Germany / 2011 / 6 min.)

It was kind of nonfiction. And I think the animals are really cute, they’re cartoons, they’re not real, but that looks like an actual picture of somewhere in Germany. Frogs don’t like that kind of weather — not weather that they can get blown around on lily pads or anything like that. I think the polar bear is really cute. So I thought that movie was pretty good.

Our Land (Dir. Joana Torgal / Portugal / 2011 / 3 min.)

It told a story of planting. It made me feel kind of plant-y, kind of grow-y. I learned that you can mix all different seeds together. The main character is the one who planted the seed, the boy or the girl, whatever, the planter. I didn’t really understand why there were words on the bottom. I think it gets better and better every time you watch it.